Abdul Ali   UPTOWN LOOKING DOWN for Romare Bearden I watch the moon make silver shadow puppets through my venetian blinds bouncing off one of your collages: the one with the men playing cards big men, cool black as a breezeless night, bodies lanky like spoons shiny as pearl cracking like a Harlem fish fry hats big like pineapple slices rings of Saturn I sit up at night wishing that I was in one of your collages my face plastered against an uptown fellow peering downtown. Eyes big at the sight of a thousand new Harlemites. David Carlson White Fang Black Tooth 2006 oil and acrylic on wood, 10” x 10” see more work by David Carlson FIRST POEM ABOUT US ..............my nose flares up like bell bottoms at the smell of Maine with its salted winds ..............drinking soup out of ceramic bowls ..............tasting wood under a silver half moon beaming off the sea ..............covered in nickel Now, we stand one bootless foot in front of the other .......Remembering high school pinky swears that red carpets would lay between our steps and littered dead-end streets ..............that now retreat like migratory birds flying south Do you remember those fortune cookies, silk napkins that fed our ..............Unknowing .......the laughter Walks to the freeway .....................The sound of broken fire hydrants .......water flowing how we laughed with ease reading the backs of laffy taffy wrappers .......waiting for the joke before innocence bled like a first fall on new flesh At nightfall, would you remember? .....................That we were once young sucking mouthfuls of air Watching the noonday sky rearrange its pillows ....... No different than time moving in tune with you no different than me running to find Maine: our own language to talk about growing up   FATHERHOOD POEM NO. I sometimes I choke on your laughter watch with green envy how your face beams when I enter the room. is it petty of me to lament that I never had a father like you—to annoy, mimic, question, lift your perfect feet up to wipe your ass, to fall asleep on, to share a face with, a last name, a space, time, two arms?   41 BREATHS FOR AMADOU DIALLO I. I can still smell the empty bullet caps—all of them— lining a vestibule smelling of urine stench, a warm African body covered in sweat, fragrant oils, blood reflecting four apathetic moon-faced NYPD officers. haven’t we all heard this familiar tale? II. I stopped believing in God for weeks. how and why did you let this happen? couldn’t you command the safety on? bend back their fingers? save him like you did Ishmael? why are we always up for slaughter, sacrificed? the way he was nailed to the asphalt wet with blood and piss. was Amadou our Muslim Christ? ‘cause I saw his body unfold wide open into the letter T holding his wallet and the nails—this time bullets— perforating, pressing, and pushing through his guileless, Guinean frame. III. how could one black man be that dangerous? he was twenty-three the same age as me. If a wallet scared them so, what will they think of my black pen? IV. that summer I knew in my bones that every black man in America had something in common: an Emmit Till, Rodney King; an Aunt named Assata Shakur; an Amadou Diallo. how we become brothers in death while coughing on life breathing the red, white, and blue pointed behind the barrel of a gun.   ARS POETICA #2 almost like dancing when the music slows the floor folds into a moleskin notebook; I wait for an omen between its lines, a knock from the other side, listen for a pause .......a breath between moving pictures; sweat and blood stains the page plum I hear its voice in curlicued letters whispering let's boogie     Abdul Ali is a native of New York City living in Washington DC. He was educated at Howard University where he studied English and Theatre. He has read his work throughout the Metropolitan DC area and published in periodicals including the Washington Post and Black Issues Book Review. He is the 2007 winner of the Mt. Vernon Poetry Festival prize. His website: http://www.poeticnoise1984.com.   Published in Volume 9, Number 2, Spring 2008.   To read more by this author: Abdul Ali : Evolving City Issue